Follow-up question on the capital gains tax: if stock markets drop because people are locking in current profits by selling stock, does that mean they have to pay taxes now? Which would mean the US government potentially gained billions of tax just because Biden made an announcement?
I'm still flabbergasted by the idea that Americans can choose when they want to pay their taxes.
In the UK, we pay 20% on CGT but that’s only on profits. We don’t have an annual wealth tax so it’s only payable when we decide to sell. There was a review on spending/finances a couple of months back but luckily CGT was left alone.
Same in Sweden, but we pay 30% CGT.
But you can dodge most of the tax by opening an investment savings account and buy bitcoin securities, however not your keys, not your bitcoin.
When the next bull cycle starts I will look in to putting half in securities and half in real bitcoins.
That way I might just be able to let my bitcoins just sit there and use the securities/ETF:s for buying and selling the four year cycles .
In the US if you open an IRA (investment retirement account) and invest from that you don't pay any capital gains taxes ever. You can't withdraw without a penalty (10%) until retirement but at that point your withdrawals are taxed as income at the regular income rate. If it's a "self-directed" IRA with check control (a particular legal entity you can set up) then you can invest in almost anything you want, including bitcoin, do as many roundtrips (or not) as you want to and never pay any tax until withdrawal. And you can self custody those coins, keep your keys. Learned about it here on this thread thanks to some great WO'ers.